During a Thursday interview on Fox Business News with Stuart Varney, Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said she investigated a $1 million earmark requested by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for a substance abuse clinic in Omar’s district and uncovered what she described as “tons of red flags.”
Ernst said the clinic was “housed in a restaurant” and that the three individuals listed as running the operation all shared the same residential address.
After alerting House leadership to her findings, the earmark was subsequently stripped from the spending bill.
Ernst told Varney:
What I uncovered the other day in one of our spending bills making its way through Congress was a $1 million earmark from Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — which was an earmark that was supposedly going to a substance abuse clinic, which actually happened to be housed in a restaurant and run by three individuals that share the same residential address, according to their IRS paperwork. Tons of red flags.So this is what we saw with the fraud involving the daycare centers. Now we see other earmarks coming directly from members of Congress where it seems fraud is being perpetrated as well.So I raised the issue, and fortunately, the House has now stripped that earmark out of that spending bill. But again, this is how easy money has been flowing to bad actors in Minnesota.
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), a noted fiscal hawk, posted a page from the list of congressional funding projects on X which identifies both of the state’s Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar and Tina Smith, as co-requesters of this earmark. Roy wrote: “Chalk one up for the good guys. Proud to work the last two days to stop the outrageous Ilhan Omar $1 million Somali earmark. Much more to do.”
While $1 million may seem insignificant in the context of the federal budget, this is often how fraud takes root. Small amounts, repeated and overlooked, can add up to major losses over time. In the stock market, investors refer to this phenomenon as “death by a thousand eighths” — a slow, incremental decline that may seem harmless at first but becomes devastating if allowed to continue.
It’s fortunate that Ernst, who has become a prominent voice for fiscal responsibility in the government, noticed this earmark and questioned its legitimacy. The decision to deny the funding likely came as an unwelcome surprise to Omar.
In fact, given the dramatic increase in Omar’s reported net worth during her time in Congress, closer scrutiny may be warranted. When she arrived in Washington in 2019, Omar reported no assets and total liabilities ranging from negative $25,000 to negative $65,000.
In her most recent financial disclosure, submitted in May 2025, Omar reported a joint net worth with her husband, Tim Mynett, of between $6 million and $30 million.
The Washington Free Beacon was the first media outlet to report on the surge in the couple’s net worth.
Omar has her husband to thank for catapulting her to multimillionaire status in 2024. Mynett’s California-based winery eStCru LLC and venture capital firm Rose Lake Capital both achieved remarkable financial turnarounds in 2024.
[The article details how those turnarounds were achieved.]
In any case, a closer examination of the extent to which Omar has directed federal funds to Somali-owned businesses in her state would be justified. Such a review would presumably fall within the scope of the federal government’s ongoing investigation of Minnesota’s growing welfare fraud scandal.
But Omar is not an outlier — she is a symptom of a broken earmark system. A comprehensive investigation into all congressional earmarks is long overdue. The results would likely shock U.S. taxpayers. The lack of transparency surrounding these deals only reinforces the case for sweeping reform and aggressive oversight of how federal dollars are truly spent.
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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